2020 Guest Speaker

Donald Katz,
Professor of Psychology, Departments of Neuroscience, Psychology, and the Volen National
Center for Complex Systems, Brandeis University

Free presentation intended for a general audience.
Reception to follow.

2020 Lecture

CANCELLED

Constructing the World of Taste in Your HeadMarch 30,
4:00 pmStaller Center Main Stage

You fork the morsel into your mouth and say “yum…chocolate cake.” The appreciation
of your dessert’s taste seems to follow directly, quickly, and simply from the placement
of the food on your tongue. The truth, however, is far more interesting and complex:
your brain actually begins determining whether you will enjoy a bite of food even
before the fork approaches your mouth and continues to work the problem well after.
Information about your food’s color, smell, texture, and taste activates multiple
parts of your brain, where that information collides with your pre-mouthful beliefs
about how it
should taste. The coming-together and shuffling of that information around the brain takes
time, as networks of neurons work together to help you decide whether the morsel in
your mouth is worth swallowing. Referring to work from psychology, biology, and computational
neuroscience, Professor Katz will de-mystify and reveal the beauty of these complexities
of the neuroscience of taste.